eli5: why do human babies take so long to mature and develop whilst most animal babies can do things on their own very shortly after birth?
In: Biology
Human babies take comparable time to develop as chimpanzees, that is withuth compensating for the difference i how long we live. They remain in practical constant contact with their mother the first year, by two years they start to move out of arms reach from their mother and by four to six they are weaned and infancy ends. They remain juveniles until they are nine years old. This is not that different to humans
It is herd animals that will need to move with the herd directly after they are born that evolve to do that, horses for example when it takes hours for a foal to walk.
If you look at predators the young are typically a lot more helpless at birth, they can hide or the mother protect them. Cats and dogs are examples of this and it takes a couple of weeks for them to walk.
Humans and other primates have offspring that take a very long time to move by themselves safely but at the same time the mother has the ability to carry them with their hands
One of the reasons is that primates and specially humans have huge brains that take a long time to develop, To develop longer in the mother the head and baby would need to be larger and birth is hard enough as it is for humans because if how the body layout with bones.
Humans and other primates have evolved to use intelligence that takes a long time to develop at a way to survive, a drawback is that it results in infants that the mother needs to take care of for a long time. It is the large skull and wide shoulders that is problematic to pass through the birth canal.
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